St. Vincent de Paul are an approved housing body. St Benedicts Conference is a group of SVP volunteers responsible for St Benedicts Housing Scheme in Malahide. We currently have 45 social housing units purpose built for older people located on Estuary Road, Malahide. We also have a community centre that is normally used to host events and activities for our tenants.These activities have obviously been postponed due to the ongoing covid-19 situation.Thankfully recently , we were finally able to safely host an outdoor coffee morning.We used this opportunity to catch up and inform our tenants of a new gardening initiative.In Feb 2021, we applied to Fingal Chamber for funding for our ‘Promoting Mental Wellbeing through Gardening’ Project.The idea for this project stemmed from the ongoing covid19 restrictions. We were concerned that our tenants were becoming increasingly isolated. So the aim of this project is to encourage our tenants to get outside and engage in some gardening. Gardening resources can be expensive, especially for those in our tenant group so our project would develop a communal group of gardening tools/equipment for all to use. We were successful with our application and Fingal Chamber awarded us a sum of money to purchase this equipment. We have purchased a small number of items so far which has been included in the attached photos. We also have an annual gardening competition, not everyone takes part as they do not have the resources so we would encourage more involvement.Winners of the competition win a gardening voucher and a small trophy.